Civil Society, Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Environment, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean, Poverty & SDGs

SOUTH AMERICA: Debate on Infrastructure Mega-Projects Finally Begins

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 16 2006 (IPS) - Rather late and somewhat quietly, civil society organisations have begun to discuss the impact of the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA), launched by the region’s governments in 2000, which is planning 335 major projects.

Concerned about the lack of available information on the projects, some of which have already got underway, the South American Regional Committee of the World Conservation Union (UICN-Sur) convened an Electronic Forum on Civil Society Perspectives on IIRSA, which opened in September and ended this month with a summary of the contributions received.

“Will IIRSA really be effective for sustainable development?” Silvia Sánchez, of the Peruvian Association for Nature Conservation, asked on the Internet forum. “Highways are valuable, but they’re useless unless they go hand in hand with land use planning that puts human beings at the centre of development,” she said.

More than 300 people participated in the forum, most of them members of social and environmental organisations and academic institutions. They warned of the danger that the infrastructure projects might reinforce a development model based on the exploitation of natural resources, without contributing to solutions for poverty and unemployment in the region.

Participants pointed out that the priority of the infrastructure projects was not determined by governments in consultation with civil society, and that they could pose “a major environmental risk,” as they will affect areas where there is a “high concentration of biodiversity.” They added that the projects will increase the indebtedness of the countries where they are carried out.

They mentioned several examples of waterways, highways or ports that were built in the name of development, but that resulted in strengthening an economic model that involves the expansion of monoculture at the expense of extensive deforestation. These schemes did not generate large numbers of jobs, and degraded the environment, they warned.

The contributors also agreed that all information to do with IIRSA is being handled on a “restricted access” basis. “On the one hand, there is no information about the impact these projects may have, and on the other, information about their possible benefits is used as publicity for the projects, which makes critical analysis very difficult,” they concluded.

During the forum, UICN-Sur and two of its member organisations, the Argentine conservationist PROTEGER Foundation and the Ecuadorean ECOLEX Corporation dealing with environmental law and management, proposed the creation of an Environmental Observatory on IIRSA, in order to bring together information from all over the region, and monitor the progress of the projects.

IIRSA emerged at the 2000 summit of South American presidents in Brasilia, to increase economic opportunities in the 12 countries of the region by building highways, bridges, dams, ports, waterways, natural gas pipelines and electricity networks and improving telecommunications, among other initiatives.

In some cases new infrastructure is planned, while in others existing installations are to be improved. A flagship project, considered to be the heart of IIRSA, is the Camisea gas pipeline in Peru, 730 kilometres in length, which takes natural gas from the tropical Amazon jungle region to the country’s Pacific coast.

The project has come under severe criticism from environmentalists and the indigenous communities that have suffered its impacts.

Indigenous people in Colombia and Venezuela are opposed to another IIRSA project, involving increased coal mining and the construction of two ports to export coal from the border region between the two countries.

Another mega-project, considered a monument to corruption in South America, is the Argentine-Paraguayan Yacyretá dam, a multi-million dollar investment which forced local residents to move their homes, had negative effects on the ecosystem and left a legacy of heavy public debt.

The most recently proposed regional integration project is the Southern Gas Pipeline, which is planned to transport natural gas 8,000 kilometres from the Venezuelan Caribbean coast to the River Plate (Río de la Plata) estuary between Argentina and Uruguay..

“We’re very concerned about all the IIRSA projects that are going ahead without any information being given to society about their impacts,” Víctor Ricco, of the Centre for Human Rights and Environment in Argentina, who contributed to the forum, told IPS. IIRSA involves a total of 335 energy, transport and telecommunications initiatives, representing an investment of nearly 38 billion dollars. Technical and financial support will be provided by the Andean Development Corporation, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Financial Fund for the Development of the River Plate Basin, among other regional credit organisations.

The banks drew up an action plan to set projects deemed to be a priority in motion, and there is a South American Infrastructure Authority at ministerial level to identify projects qualifying for IIRSA, within 10 economic integration hubs.

The hubs were designed on the basis of actual and potential trade flows, and many of the projects transcend national borders.

“Who decided that these projects will be priorities for our countries?” asked Gonzalo Varillas, of the ECOLEX Corporation, in the forum. “Wouldn’t those millions of dollars be better spent on health and education?” In an interview with IPS, Jorge Cappato, head of the PROTEGER Foundation, said that “there is a major contradiction between the sheer size of the IIRSA projects and the transformations they entail, and the level of public ignorance.”

“Society reacts when a problem is right in front of their faces: a smokestack, a rubbish dump, or a change in the colour of the water in a river,” he said. “The impacts of large-scale infrastructure in remote places like the Amazon are much less noticeable, but are far more serious, and some of them are irreversible.”

Cappato believed that the forum was a positive experience, because “it opened a way to access information about a subject which is lurking in the shadows.” “No one can guarantee today that the IIRSA projects are going to make us more integrated, or improve our quality of life,” he added.

So far, many of the big infrastructure projects in the region have been of “doubtful benefit” to the communities, such as the Camisea gas pipeline, he said.

“Nor is it clear that this is the way to greater integration, or to reducing poverty. On the contrary, many of these projects have destroyed jobs, created a rural exodus and increased poverty,” he remarked.

“The main challenge is not to appear to be anti-development. We are not against infrastructure, but are in favour of economic growth that helps to improve the quality of life in our societies,” he commented.

“If projects are needed, they should be discussed with the communities that will be affected, to see who will benefit,” he said. This was something the Observatory could do, he added.

“One of the aims of the Observatory is to make governments and multilateral credit agencies understand that it is necessary to enter into dialogue with civil society and with the communities affected by the projects,” as otherwise “there are sure to be conflicts,” he underlined.